Member Article

Howard Russell becomes first North East BIM accredited construction firm

Ahead of the Government’s 2016 deadline to make BIM (Building Information Modelling) mandatory on all government-funded projects, Howard Russell has been certified as BIM PAS1192-2 compliant, the first North East firm to achieve the necessary accreditation.

The independent North East construction firm’s BIM management systems and processes were put under scrutiny over a period of 14 days by Ocean Certification, a UKAS certified accreditor.

Craig Muldoon, pre-construction manager and BIM champion at Howard Russell said: “This is a fantastic achievement for the team at Howard Russell, we have made a considerable investment in training and resources to get to this level and we are very proud of the accreditation. This puts us at the forefront of the BIM working environment not only in the North East but on a national level”.

BIM is an intelligent 3D model-based process for planning, design, construction and management of buildings.

Over the past two years Howard Russell has invested over £70k in software and training and dedicated considerable time to adopting BIM. The firm has recently completed their first full BIM project, a £3m refurbishment of Mash Purveyors newly acquired 53,000sq.ft warehouse at Park Royal Business Estate in northwest London. This resulted in two new jobs within the company and they say this new accreditation has the potential to create further jobs.

Craig added: “Becoming Level 2 BIM qualified presents tremendous opportunities for the business. We are already becoming known for our BIM capabilities on a national scale and have had numerous enquiries from London based companies. We firmly believe that these will lead to further new instructions and in turn create further new jobs.”

To add to the momentum Howard Russell has been shortlisted for two RICS BIM 4SME awards for Best BIM Project and Best BIM Website. They were also recently shortlisted for the North East Constructing Excellence award for BIM Project of the Year.

The results of a recent survey conducted by law firm Pinsent Masons found that nearly two-thirds (64%) of construction experts believe that the Government’s 2016 target to achieve Level 2 BIM capability on all centrally-funded projects is unachievable. It also suggested that one of the main obstacles of achieving Level 2 BIM compliancy is the apparent lack of understanding among subcontractors and unsuccessful collaboration throughout the supply chain.

Craig said: “Having now experienced first-hand the benefits of using BIM for both client and contractor we find it hard to believe that more contractors are not pushing this within their organisations.

“All our staff are fully on board and we are also driving forward change by extending our knowledge further down the supply chain and actively encouraging sub-contractors to get BIM ready. This will allow the whole project team to integrate more effectively and use BIM as a primary tool on future projects”.

John Nielsen, Chair of North East BIM Hub & CIC North East added: “A lot of contractors, designers and suppliers will have to work tremendously hard over the next six months to ramp up their BIM training if they are to meet the Government’s 2016 deadline.”